Broken Song
By (Author) Barry Hill
Random House Australia
Vintage (Australia)
1st August 2003
Australia
General
Non Fiction
Indigenous peoples
301.092
Short-listed for Age Book of the Year: Non-fiction 2003
Paperback
800
Width 153mm, Height 232mm, Spine 55mm
939g
The biography of T. G. H. Strehlow and Aboriginal possession. A group of men chanting with the enthusiasm that made them forget age & weakness & becoming young again in spirit the rising and falling of the chant melody, like the breathing that gives us life what an unforgettable scene! Thus wrote T. G.H. Strehlow in 1935, as he began his life work, Songs of Central Australia, acclaimed as one of the great books of world literature. Prize-winning poet and historian, Barry Hill, with exclusive access to Strehlow s diaries, has written a major work about the troubled man who grew up on the Hermannsburg mission, became the first Patrol Officer of Central Australia, called himself the last of the Aranda , and compulsively collected secret-sacred objects and images. Broken Song straddles a century of Australian history, from the race wars on the frontier to the modern era of aboriginal land rights, tracking Strehlow s creative and tragic life in translation.
Barry Hill is an acclaimed historian, writer and poet. His books include THE BEST PICTURE, RAFT, SITTING IN (and award-winning account of the longest industrial action in Australian history) and THE ROAD TO ULURU.